"We are close to my country now," she murmured. "Too late for us to
escape successfully, if we wait much longer."
We did not need the pressure suits which Leh had hidden here, thinking
he might find an opportunity for us to disembark while still above the
atmosphere. The anti-gravity platform was an oblong, raft-like metallic
thing, with its mechanisms under a hood in its bow. Nereid understood
its workings. She lay flat upon it as I slid it through the porte and
jumped beside her.
We went like a sliding rocket, with a rush of wind that stopped our
breath. But the hooded bow partially shielded us, so that presently we
could breathe. Behind us, and over us now, the gleaming shape of the
spaceship was seemingly sliding upward and backward. Beneath us the
shining sea with a glowing shoreline off at the horizon seemed rocking
with a crazy sway. And then at last we steadied.
"Did it!" I gloated. "We made it, Nereid. Evidently they didn't see us
rocketing off."
There was no sign of any alarm from the ship and presently it had
dwindled high above us and was gone.
Amazingly swift, that downward glide. The wind whistled past us with a
screaming whine. At five hundred feet Nereid leveled us as we headed
for the glowing shoreline. I could see artificial illumination there
now, a myriad little dots of colored lights. And then little colored
beams were waving.
"My city--the city of Arron," Nereid said.
It was a few miles back in the forest, where a great shining lagoon
opened. A riot of glowing, prismatic color burst upon us; and as Nereid
saw it, she sucked in her breath with a little gasp.
"The love festival," she murmured. "Oh why--why would they have that in
times like these? With Tollgamo so ready to attack us?"
I stared down with awed amazement at the scene of weird sensuous beauty
spread now so close beneath us.
* * * * *
Allen's first sight of the country of Gorts, as he afterward told me,
was a line of terraced hills that rose steeply up from the shore of the
placid sea. He was in the controlroom of the Spaceship with Rhool, and
with the grim woman Garga beside him. It had been a tense time for
Allen, when the escape of Nereid and myself was discovered. But he had
been allowed a measure of freedom, whereas I was locked in my cubby.
Allen was not suspected, nor, fortunately, was Leh. Two of the Gorts
came in for Rhool's wrath.
"Tollgamo will deal with you," he said.
Then Allen spoke up, denouncing me as a traitor to him; claiming that
I had agreed to join Tollgamo. "That Peters girl bewitched him," Allen
said.
Whether it fooled the big, leering Rhool or not, Allen couldn't tell.
Perhaps it did, for Allen now was taken more as one of them, than a
prisoner.
The Country of the Gorts! To Allen, as he stared down through the
turret window of the spaceship, those terraces of grey metal rock were
as grim and forbidding as the Gort people themselves. In the glowing
night-sheen, the barren wastes near the shore seemed utterly without
life. And then Allen saw weird vegetation in little patches; and
occasionally roaming wild things with round eyes which stared up at the
ship. Some of them incuriously stared; others, frightened, scuttled
away.
The ship now was following a broad, gleaming inlet of the iridescent
sea. Ten Earth-miles or so, to its head where lights gleamed on a
terraced hillside. It was Tollgamo's little city. Allen had only a
brief glimpse as the ship swooped down and settled into the rack of a
metal landing stage. Rows of blue and green lights were strung in half
a dozen rows on the terraces, one above the other to mark the streets,
with metal ladders vertically connecting them. Metal and stone little
houses, polished, grey-blue, lined the streets. At one end of the lower
street, close by a promontory bluff where beyond a bridge-like metal
ladder a smaller kiosk overlooked the inlet, there was a larger, square
building, terraced into three stories. Round spots of dull purple light
marked its four corners. On its roof, metal-garbed figures paced back
and forth.
"Tollgamo the Master--that is his house," the woman Garga murmured to
Allen.
Green-yellow, turgid smoke belched from a chimney-like opening in the
cliff, where doubtless, partly underground, a factory was in operation.
Figures moved in the grim weird glow of the bleak streets; apparatus
was being dragged along one of them. Men and women working; and in the
doors and windows of the cubical houses, the figures of children stood
peering.
As the ship settled lower, Allen realized that both above and below
ground it was a beehive of activity now. And presently he could hear
sounds; the clank of metal machinery; the grind of gears; the voices of
the workers.
Beside him Allen was suddenly aware of the grotesque, hunched form
of Nereid's brother, Leh. Neither of them spoke; and then Leh, with
a surreptitious gesture, indicated the shining inlet. Down on the
opposite shore of it, a tunnel mouth showed, with a red-yellow glare
back under the opposite cliff. A crowd of metal-clad workers, goggled
against the glare so that they looked like huge beetle-eyed insects,
were struggling with apparatus which they were pulling out.
Leh was tense. Then a moment came where he was able to whisper
furtively to Allen. "I will try later to get us to that cliff. Do you
see that Kiosk? If we can get there, we will dive to the water. From
there I have a way of escaping."
That was all. Allen had only time to murmur assent. The ship landed.
With Rhool half guarding, half leading him, he was taken along
the lower street. The workers stood grim, impassive, until they
recognized Rhool. Then like machines they stood stiff, with a hand
touching the metal insignia of their helmets until Rhool had passed.
Even the children stood rigid, saluting. Little bodies drilled to
efficiency; impassive childish faces. But in their eyes still there was
childhood--excited, wondering childhood.
Rhool and Allen passed the guards at the entrance to Tollgamo's home.
In the dim blue-green glow of a metal room Allen was told by Rhool
to stand, and Tollgamo would come. Then Rhool was gone. Unseen eyes
were watching Allen. He sensed it; and stood stiffly against one wall,
awaiting the coming of the Master. It was a strange, square apartment.
Blue-lit, so that its richly tiled floor and ceiling glistened
like polished steel. The furniture was square, glistening in the
light-sheen. At one end of the room a huge polished table with a single
big chair at its end, held a variety of small apparatus, a bank of
levers and little buttons as though for signalling commands. And there
was a neat stack of what seemed to be charts and mathematical data.
A murmur outside the room brought Allen back from his contemplation of
his surroundings. Men's voices; a guttural command. Then Rhool came
in, walking with stiff, pseudo mechanical tread. On his heavy face
was a grinning leer. Behind him there was a Gort man and woman. Allen
recognized them; both had been on the spaceship and both were blamed by
Rhool for the escape of Nereid and me. They came now marching stiffly
erect. Their faces were impassive, but terror was in their eyes and in
the tense set of their lips.
* * * * *
And then at last came Tollgamo. Involuntarily Allen gasped at sight of
him.
He was a giant figure of a man, six feet six, at least. Unlike
the square, robot appearance of his menials, his garments of grey
metal-fabric were soft, and clinging. A flowing tunic fell from his
powerfully broad shoulders to below his waist, with a wide, glistening
metal belt; trousers which sheathed his powerful, shapely legs; shoes
with padded soles so that he moved soundlessly. He was bareheaded,
and his black hair, closely clipped, came to a peak at his forehead.
His skin was the familiar Venus grey, but there was a saffron cast
to it. His high-bridged nose was hawk-like, his chin protruding, but
square--the firm jaw completely characteristic of determination and
power.
His thin-lipped mouth, as he came quietly in and surveyed Allen with
dark-eyed gaze, was faintly smiling. Allen, standing rigid, silently
met the stare. It was then that he felt, far more than in Tollgamo's
commanding aspect, the power of the man's personality. A dominant force
seemed to radiate from him, so that no one could be in his presence an
instant without feeling it. An aura of command that made Allen suddenly
feel like a child. Helpless; and with a vague, indefinable shudder
within him.
And then Tollgamo spoke. Suave, gentle voice of careful, cultivated
English, meticulously correct, yet with a strange foreign intonation.
"So you are one of the Earthmen, Jack Allen?"
"Yes," Allen said; and then remembered Rhool's instructions, so that
after a moment he added, "Yes, Master. I give you service."
Tollgamo's faint ironic smile broadened; his glittering dark eyes
seemed to hold a twinkle of sardonic amusement, "You learn fast." His
gaze darted away; went to Rhool, and then to the Gort man and woman
from the spaceship who stood with terror in their eyes.
"I hear that you need punishment," he said gently. "This Earthman will
learn from it." His tone, almost drab, was casual, with a slow finality.
With pounding heart, Allen stood watching the metal-clad man and woman
as Tollgamo quietly confronted them. The terror leaped from their eyes
to stamp their faces. And Tollgamo said quietly,
"That is bad to show fear. That forces the punishment to be worse."
At his gesture, a flick of his jeweled fingers, they bared their grey
chests. Tollgamo's hands were at his ornamented belt, each of them
leveling a little jeweled weapon. The weapons suddenly hissed, and from
each of them a tiny violet pencilray of heat-light sprang. Allen gulped
as the beams struck the chests of the two victims, and the grey flesh,
turned red, then black as Tollgamo wrote a brand of punishment, an
insignia of dishonor. The man stood firm, with a hand still at salute,
his slit of mouth twisted as he pressed his lips together in an attempt
to restrain his cry of pain.
But the woman involuntarily moaned. It was too much for Allen. He
gasped,
"Stop that, you damned torturer! They're not the ones who are guilty
anyway! They--"
Tollgamo had finished. He snapped off the tiny rays and slowly turned
to where Allen had taken a step toward him. And the smile now was gone
from his serene face.
"You are not yet trained," he said quietly. "I forgive you for that--so
short a time." Another flick of his hand; and Rhool led the stumbling
man and woman away.
The smell of the burning flesh drifted off; and Tollgamo, alone here
now, fronted the shuddering Allen. Again he was gently smiling.
"You show weakness?" he said. "I am disappointed. So you know who
released that Kent Fanning, and Peters' daughter?"
"No I don't. I'm sorry. That was just my desire to stop you doing that
to that woman."
Amusement was in Tollgamo's eyes and twitching at his thin grey lips.
"So? You would join me, and still try to lie to me?" His gesture
dismissed it. "We will talk of that some other time." For a moment he
stood pondering. "That girl--that Peters' daughter," he added. "Rhool
tells me she is very beautiful. Is that so?" There seemed a twinkle in
his inscrutable eyes.
"Yes," Allen agreed.
"That is interesting. I must see for myself. I think perhaps I must
protect her from the things that will happen tonight."
Allen tensed inside. Did he mean that his attack upon the Arones would
take place tonight?
"The woman Garga will give you supper," Tollgamo added abruptly. From
a ring on his finger a silent light-signal sprang across the room and
through a small arcade doorway; and at once Garga appeared there.
"Take him to my rest-room," Tollgamo said. "He is hungry. Give him
food. I will send for him later."
"Yes, Master."
Then as Tollgamo moved away, lithe and silent as a great panther, with
his padded soles soundless on the metal floor, he said quietly.
"Your thoughts are very transparent, Earthman. But I think you can be
of use to me."
* * * * *
In the small adjoining room, Garga brought Allen food. They ate it
together.
"What did he mean by things that will happen tonight?" Allen suddenly
murmured.
Garga had been sitting, staring at him with her slumbrous dark gaze.
"The attack," she said.
"And Peters doesn't know that?"
"No." Her hand touched him. "I am trusting you."
"Of course," Allen agreed. He recalled how Nereid's brother, Leh,
as the spaceship landed, had gazed down at the inlet, across which
workers were bringing things from a tunnel to the edge of the water.
Leh had sucked in his breath as though with startled surprise.
"The attack," Allen murmured. "Will it be upon the city of Arron?"
"Yes--naturally. And the imbecile slaves there--they think they are
going to help." Her grim grey face lighted with a smile. "That will be
amusing; those imbecile workers causing bloodshed, making it so easy
for us, when we get there."
"Get there--how, Garga? By air?"
Allen felt that Leh now was trying to get just such information as
this; and he and Allen would escape--get to Arron and warn Peters.
But evidently haste was necessary. By what Tollgamo said, he would be
attacking perhaps within a few hours.
"By air?" Garga echoed. "Oh no. By water." She leaned closer to Allen.
A woman warrior. But the womanhood in her now was making her bosom rise
and fall with her emotion at Allen's nearness. "Under the water," she
murmured. "You see how clever we are? That is the last method of attack
that the Arones think we will try. There are grottos beneath the city
of Arron. Grottos with the sea in them. So that we shall come up that
way, appearing all over the city at once." She chuckled. "They will not
know there is to be any attack at all. Just trouble with the imbeciles.
And suddenly we will be there among them!"
Allen had it now! All the information needed. More than ever now he
wanted to connect with Leh, and escape out of here.
"Garga, listen," he murmured, "were you ordered to stay here with me,
until Tollgamo sends for me?"
"Yes," she agreed. Her gaze clung to his. "That will not be--too hard
for you?"
"No--no, of course not, Garga, but listen--" Abruptly Allen tensed. In
a dark doorway nearby, beyond which Allen knew Tollgamo's guards were
stationed, a dim blob of figure had appeared. Garga's back was to the
door; she did not see the lurking shape. It was a hunched, misshapen
silhouette. Leh, in his masquerade as jester, standing there listening.
"Listen," Allen quickly resumed. "There's no reason why you should not
show me around a bit, is there? On that cliff quite near here there's a
little kiosk that looks over the inlet. You and I--alone there, Garga?"
His hand touched her square, metal-clad shoulder; and at once her hand
went up, gripping his. "Perhaps."
"I would like to have you show me what's going on," he urged. "And to
sit there with you, just for a little time."
Leh heard it. His hunched figure in the doorway moved and his head
nodded assent; and then he drew back, was gone.
"I will get you a cloak," Garga murmured abruptly.
She came with the cloak in a moment; a long, dark-grey garment of
flexible metal. With this on, and with the helmet which Rhool had given
him, Allen could pass for a Gort. Garga was eager, trembling, as she
took him through a small side doorway. The nearby glowing city street
bustled with activity. Garga and Allen were not challenged as they
skirted the edge of the metal street; and presently came to a dark and
narrow little bridge, a fifty foot catwalk-span over a chasm to the
promontory head where the lookout kiosk stood dark and silent above the
lagoon.
A new idea had come to Allen. As together they crossed the catwalk he
murmured to Garga:
"The Master spoke of the Peters girl, and asked me if she is beautiful."